By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

The skinny on how to enroll in Manoa School at age 3 will be revealed tonight by 93-year-old Miriam Woolsey Reed in the multipurpose rec room of the Manoa District Park gymnasium from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Don't miss it.

Reed may be the oldest living graduate of Manoa School. As close as we can figure, she started in 1914 when most of Manoa was in taro and pasture. Manoa School consisted of a frame building. Miriam was in braids that her mother coiled on top of her head so tight that her eyes slanted.

The reason she started school at age 3 was that her brothers and sisters were older so she had to play alone. Miriam used to go out to the gate on the road. When the kids from the Salvation Army Home came by on their way to school, she followed along.

"Miss Ing was the teacher," she said. "I hung around for three days sitting on the school steps until Miss Ing said, 'Miriam, come in and take a seat.' "

This and other little known historical events are on an oral history program sponsored by Malama o Manoa. Other Manoa alumni participating are Diane Devereux Ackerson, George Arizumi and Chris Faria. You can expect some tall tales and colorful anecdotes.

Miriam said her ancestors got their land from King Kamehameha III, who gave them a parcel in Manoa and another at Kalia down in Waikiki. Miriam's father planted the Manoa land in taro. One of his taro growers was a Chinese man who jumped ship and camped out in Manoa Valley making charcoal until Miriam's father hired him.

"We had two horses, a buggy and a wagon," she said. "We rode to church on Sunday in the buggy. The wagon was used to haul taro to Waikiki. It was peeled in Manoa but pounded in Waikiki." Miriam said at least two men worked at pounding the poi.

Her father sometimes took her along when he delivered poi in the wagon to Kawaiaha'o School, Mills School (now Mid-Pacific Institute) and the Girls' Industrial School. She said her father also delivered poi to rich families in Makiki: the Kawananakoas, the Macfarlanes and the Dowsetts.

"We washed flour bags from Love's Bakery and used them to deliver poi," Miriam explained. "Japanese families in Manoa also made underclothes from flour bags."

Another taro grower in Manoa was Wong Nin, patriarch of the Wong family of Manoa. His son, Richard, was Miriam's classmate, a rascal. "He brought the teacher a box of chocolates," Miriam recalled. "But when she opened the box, frogs jumped out."

Diane Devereux Ackerson, daughter of former legislator Dorothy Devereux, recalls school after World War II. She said the pupils didn't wear shoes but the girls had to be in dresses, hair combed, either braids or a rice-bowl haircut. Her fifth-grade teacher, Helen Buffett, recently died at Arcadia a few days short of 100.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.